At the moment, I’m half-intrigued. Half-intrigued meaning that I care about anything that happens with So Ji Sub (the above scene not included) and Han Ji Min’s characters, but the other stuff? Not so much.

Right from the very start, the set-up of “Cain and Abel” is eerily similar to that of “Gourmet,” which was also an SBS production, so this gives me a very bad feeling already. Both dramas are essentially ‘occupation’ dramas that focuses on career-oriented lives of both our male leads. The two brothers are close and they are both in the same field, which leads to the conflict of the drama that will carry us through the entire thing.

The Cain and Abel story, as told from the Bible,

Adam knew his wife Eve intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” Then she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of a flock, but Cain cultivated the land. In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also presented [an offering]— some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Upon rewatching this scene for the thousandth time, I realized what was bothering me about it the first 999 times — color scheme.

First, the lighting doesn’t help. The four are in an indoor basketball court with white lights, and they all look pretty ghostly to begin, but the lighting highlights this even more severely. Second, the thing that bothers me most, is that Yi Jung’s damn paisley bandanna matches the walls of the court, and Woobin’s hoodie matches with the dark blue stand of the basketball stand.

Dark blue, dark green, and dark red are all really strong colors by themselves and it’s hard to make them look good together. Granted, I’m fussing about colors on a basketball court, but that in conjunction with Yi Jung’s green bandanna and Woobin’s dark blue hoodie, it’s just too much. It bothers my eyes! And ultimately, Boys Over Flowers has already proved itself to be pretty undependable in terms of artistic merit…

In terms of the acting in this scene, I’m once again asking myself why Lee Minho shines so much more than all the other actors. I think part of it has to do with the obviously more complex character of Jun Pyo, but aside from that, in comparison to Kim Bum’s Yi Jung, Lee Minho’s reactions are a lot less forced. Kim Bum was very loud with his anger and to it didn’t convince me of the logic of Yi Jung getting riled up over this turn of events. Yes, YJ could’ve felt that Jun Pyo was really being a bastard in cutting ties with Jandi, but this isn’t congruent with the way that he’s been acting in the series thus far. He’s been rather vocal about siding with Jun Pyo during Jun Pyo’s quarrel with Ji Hoo, and he’s made several statements about how someone like Geum Jandi could shake up the F4 dynamic. He could’ve changed because of Ga-eul’s implication that he’s scared to fall in love and is thus angry with Jun Pyo for not taking advantage of what he has, but really, I don’t believe this. I guess overall, something about Yi Jung rubs me the wrong way and I’m not inclined to give him benefit of the doubt.